I Have Not Filed My Taxes, Does My Offer in Compromise Stand a Chance?
Offer in Compromise with non-compliance.
The stern answer is, unfortunately, no. That is how we had to respond to a recent chat question. The second thing the IRS will check after making sure you submitted your application fee and required Offer payment(s), is a compliance check. If you have outstanding returns, you can expect your Offer to be returned.
What should you do now?
In a situation like this, you should withdraw your Offer. It is going to be returned for non-compliance anyway. You do not want to be considered as someone that submits frivolous Offer submissions in an effort to stop collections.
Get into compliance and file a new offer.
After you have submitted ALL the outstanding required returns you will want to make sure they are on file. You know it is on file when you get an IRS notice that informs you there is a balance due or a refund that is outside of the refund statute. Once you have a letter for each outstanding year, you are safe to refile your Offer.
Should you get help?
I have seen many people try to prepare their own OIC and fail because they do not fully understand the art of dealing with the IRS. Yes, you can submit an Offer in Compromise yourself but if you are trying to considerably reduce your debt, I recommend you rethink your position.
An “accepted” OIC is not the same as a “successful” OIC.
There is more to it. Sure, the average taxpayer can fill out the forms and after spending hours reading and rereading the instructions provide the substantiation needed for an application to be accepted. How do you measure success? To me, success is measured with an approval on the LOWEST DOLLAR AMOUNT the IRS will accept
If you feel that you may be in over your head, or just want to get a second opinion, let’s set up a short call. To avoid the back and forth emails and phone tag, I have included a link to my Calendar https://calendly.com/taxman/tax-problem-resolution-initial-consultation. Let’s set up a 30 min. phone conference to get to know each other. The phone number to call is 855-829-5877 and my extension is 203.